Alien Priest
I read Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony for the first time eight years ago. To say "it changed my life" would be cliche. What the book did do was infect me with a particular viewpoint of how "church" can be embodied -- a way that has its roots in the New Testament; a way that reminds us of the call of the church in the aftermath of Christendom and in the context of American Empire.
I think the reason so much of this book resonated for me has to do with the authors' critique of the liberal mainline project. The authors contend that before any other activity, the church is called to be the church -- a community of people formed and reformed by constant engagement with the story of God's people as encountered in the Bible. In the absence of a robust conversation with the Scriptures that contain our story as Christians, the church readily drifts toward becoming a pseudo-social services agency with a dash of easily digestible religious snack food on the side.
Critics of this book have labeled the authors as "sectarian". These critics charge that the church cannot isolate itself from ongoing conversation with the culture at large. I believe such a critique misses the point, which is until the church learns how to be the church, it will always allow the larger culture to frame the conversation with the categories of the culture's choosing. Indeed, unless Christians learn the language of our faith (which we learn in church) we won't even know that we're responding to culturally conditioned categories in the first place.
One place where the church gets particularly confused, the authors argue, is in assuming that by providing "services and fellowship" and promoting "good feelings" that it is somehow living out its mission. While stating that there is nothing wrong with any of those things, the authors argue that when services, fellowship and good feelings become ends in themselves the natural result is "sentimentality", which the authors label as "the most detrimental corruption of the church today" (page 120). They go on to say, "Sentimentality, after all, is but the way our unbelief is lived out. Sentimentality, that attitude of being always ready to understand but not to judge, corrupts us and the ministry...Without God, without the One whose death on the cross challenges all our 'good feelings,' who stands beyond and over against our human anxieties, all we have left is sentiment, the saccharine residue of theism in demise." (pp. 120-121)
Amen.
I read Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony for the first time eight years ago. To say "it changed my life" would be cliche. What the book did do was infect me with a particular viewpoint of how "church" can be embodied -- a way that has its roots in the New Testament; a way that reminds us of the call of the church in the aftermath of Christendom and in the context of American Empire.
I think the reason so much of this book resonated for me has to do with the authors' critique of the liberal mainline project. The authors contend that before any other activity, the church is called to be the church -- a community of people formed and reformed by constant engagement with the story of God's people as encountered in the Bible. In the absence of a robust conversation with the Scriptures that contain our story as Christians, the church readily drifts toward becoming a pseudo-social services agency with a dash of easily digestible religious snack food on the side.
Critics of this book have labeled the authors as "sectarian". These critics charge that the church cannot isolate itself from ongoing conversation with the culture at large. I believe such a critique misses the point, which is until the church learns how to be the church, it will always allow the larger culture to frame the conversation with the categories of the culture's choosing. Indeed, unless Christians learn the language of our faith (which we learn in church) we won't even know that we're responding to culturally conditioned categories in the first place.
One place where the church gets particularly confused, the authors argue, is in assuming that by providing "services and fellowship" and promoting "good feelings" that it is somehow living out its mission. While stating that there is nothing wrong with any of those things, the authors argue that when services, fellowship and good feelings become ends in themselves the natural result is "sentimentality", which the authors label as "the most detrimental corruption of the church today" (page 120). They go on to say, "Sentimentality, after all, is but the way our unbelief is lived out. Sentimentality, that attitude of being always ready to understand but not to judge, corrupts us and the ministry...Without God, without the One whose death on the cross challenges all our 'good feelings,' who stands beyond and over against our human anxieties, all we have left is sentiment, the saccharine residue of theism in demise." (pp. 120-121)
Amen.
posted by FrGaryB | 9:52 PM
1 Comments:
As Stan the Man once said, "the great enemy of the church is not atheism, but sentimentality."
Blog on, Mate.
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